Civil disobedience

“ The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the State were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. ”

“ But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?—in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? ”

“ How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also.
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. ”

“ If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth,—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. ”

“ Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? ”

“ When we were thus anxiously feeling our way, our rulers have come to our help. The hand of God is clearly seen in recent events. Clean simple Civil Disobedience, with all the advantages of individual as well as of mass disobedience, with the risks of violence reduced to a minimum, has been rendered possible by the wholesale prohibitions of Congress executive work which is now being promulgated as law in province after province. ”

“ Nothing could be further from the truth. The policy of civil disobedience was accepted by the All-India Congress Committee at the beginning of November and it was not until towards the end of that month that action against the volunteers was taken. Mr. Gandhi himself, in moving the civil disobedience resolution on November 4th defined civil disobedience as a civil revolution, which, wherever practised would mean the end of the Government's authority and open defiance of the Government and its laws. ”

“ Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. ”

“ This American government,—what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. ”

“ If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. ”

“ I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.
Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? ”

“ The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support, are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. ”

“ Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine. ”

“ In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. ”

“ The issue was decided in favour of Parliament but as it must happen in every war of arms, the victory for individual liberty was only temporary. Though the result of Civil War was disastrous from the point of view of individual liberty, and though it required another revolution—this time, a non-violent revolution—to put individual liberty on a sure foundation “the knowledge that the subject had sat in rude judgment on their King, man to man, speeded the slow emancipation of the mind from the shackles of custom and ancient reverence.” ”

“ A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned ”

“ Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. ”

“ Others,—as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders,—serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part ”

“ If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. ”

“ I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. ”

“ Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. ”

“ The whole dogma of passive obedience must be rejected, whatever guise it assumes, under whatever alias it skulks,—whether in tyrannical usurpations of king, parliament, or judicial tribunal,—whether in exploded theories of Sir Robert Filmer, or rampant assumptions of the Fugitive Slave Act. The rights of the civil power are limited; there are things beyond its province; there are matters out of its control; there are cases in which the faithful citizen may say,—ay, must say,—"I will not obey." ”

“ To justify rebellion, the injustice or failure of a government must be so great, that it cannot be endured,—so great, that it will manifestly be better on the whole, to run all the risks of a bloody conflict, of civil war, than to endure the execution of the governmental laws.
3. To justify rebellion, there must be little or no prospect that the government can be peaceably altered, as ours may be, or that the injustice or oppression of the government can be made to cease by any peaceable means. Violence against government, rebellion, civil war, are no small matters. ”

“ Where the conflict is open, as if Congress should demand the perpetration of murder, the office of conscience, as final arbiter, is undisputed. But in every conflict, the same queenly office is hers. By no earthly power can she be dethroned. Each person, after anxious examination, without haste, without passion, solemnly for himself must decide this great controversy. Any other rule attributes infallibility to human laws, places them beyond question, and degrades all men to an unthinking, passive obedience. ”

“ The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to,—for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well,—is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. ”

“ In fact, who has proclaimed the principle of insurrection as a duty? Who has paid adulation to the nation while claiming for it a sovereignty which it was incapable of exercising? Who has destroyed the sanctity and respect for the laws, in making them depend, not on the sacred principles of justice, or the nature of things and on civil justice, but simply on the will of an assembly of men strangers to the knowledge of civil, criminal, administrative, political, and military law? ”

“ These frequent scuffles between despotism and freedom, with despotism shielded by law, cannot otherwise than demoralize our people. They unsettle the popular mind concerning eternal principles of justice. They harden the heart by familiarity with violence. They accustom people to the idea that it is right for Capital to own Labor; and thus the reverence for Liberty, which we inherited from our fathers, will gradually die out in the souls of our children. We are compelled to disobey our own consciences, and repress all our humane feelings, or else to disobey the law. ”

“ Ten persons were accused “of an attempt to upset the present constitution of the kingdom, to excite the citizens or inhabitants of the state to sedition, to arm themselves against the royal authority, and to bring about a civil war by arming the citizens or inhabitants of the state against one another, or by inciting them so to arm themselves.” ”

“ And, finally, by implicitly advocating a policy of concession to armed rebellion, they propose to set aside the fundamental obligation of submission to the Constitutional will of the majority, to remove the only guarantee of order in democratic life, to pay a premium to revolt, and thus to open the flood-gates of civil disorder, and a turbulent and endless war of factions. ”

“ One of the unavoidable consequences of the present insurrection is the entire suppression in many places of all the ordinary means of administering civil justice by the officers and in the forms of existing law. ”

“ The State demands, and must necessarily demand, implicit obedience. From the loyal it receives it. Those from whom it does not receive it are rebels, no matter how conscientious they may be, how lofty their moral elevation, how sublimely passive their resistance. So far as their disobedience extends they are the enemies of organized society, disrupters of the commonwealth, subverters of government, the allies and confederates of criminals and anarchists. It is worth noting, moreover, how easily their passive resistance develops into more active forms of rebellion. ”